Goods

April 7 2020

To be fulfilled

(adj; the past participle of the verb “to fulfill”):

the feeling of happiness; possessing the feeling of having reached one's potential

In the vast warehouse

where brightly packaged goods

are stacked in tottering towers,

and big cardboard boxes

facing blankly out

form brown canyon walls

it feels like Christmas morning.

The on-line store,

where smoothly whirring robots

patrol long concrete corridors,

and harried workers rush

keeping up with frantic orders.

The accumulation of goods

which are good to go.

But it's not a warehouse anymore.

It's now a fulfillment centre,

for customers sitting at home

hovering over screens, or scrolling tapped-out phones

who hope to change their lives;

find happiness, somehow,

or at least, for now, satisfaction.

Acquisition

novelty

abundance.

Not self-realization, exactly

but a kind of fulfillment.

To fulfill

(verb):

bring to completion

realize something desired.

Trouble is

the stuff of dreams

is often just that.

Much the same as “wherever you go, there you are”

a new bauble

will not change, transform, remake

or even make you better.

The fulfillment centre

isn't a building in Illinois, just outside Chicago,

some big box store

surrounded by ample parking.

Because possession

is an empty promise.

And Christmas

comes only once a year.

The first time it struck me that “fulfillment centre” was Amazon's term for their vast sprawling warehouses was seeing it in an article in the daily paper a few years ago. I really can't quibble. It is, after all, literally acceptable: there is no denying that “to fulfill” is to bring to completion. Still, I was instantly offended by this newest debasement of language, and actually fired off a witty – and, predictably, ignored – letter to the editor.

I encountered the expression again today, and only then realized that it would make a far better poem than self-righteous missive (although this may count as both!). Especially so since it plays with the nuance and connotation of language; and isn't that what poetry is all about? Anyway, any time I can savage materialism and mindless consumerism, I do. The accumulation of goods. For better or worse; for bad or good.

(It is just outside Chicago, btw: according to Google, Amazon's biggest fulfillment centre is more than a million square feet and near Joliet Illinois.)